Do Men Find Females More Attractive if They Play Guitar (or Appear to Look as if They Do)?

Hey readers,

I'd like to think of myself as the exception to the rule that all women love guitar players. But, nah, who am I kidding? There's just something about that grungy look with the fuck it attitude that continues to intrigue me.

The worn in leather jacket over the beloved classic rock tees and scruff that's borderline homeless-looking is enough to have me seriously forget the fact that I probably won't like his band but damn, he sure looks good with a guitar in hand.

Turns out, even science agrees that looking like a guitarists could get you potentially laid more. A study published in the “Psychology of Music” conducted an experiment where a man asked 300 women for their phone number. The catch is that sometimes he was holding a guitar case, other times, a gym bag. Low and behold, carrying around a guitar case gets you more digits (at an 18 percent success rate out of the 100 women he asked).

If that's not enough to convince you, then another study in 2012 had single women receive a 'friend' request on Facebook from a guy. The strangers posing with a guitar in their profile pics also had the highest acceptance rates as opposed to those who didn't.

I was curious to see if the same would work with males. Sure, musicians are a type for the female fantasy. I personally wouldn't mind banging Alex Turner or any of the Arctic Monkeys for that matter, but what about men? Do they find females more attractive if they play guitar or appear to look as if they do?

Since I'm one of the few ladies in an office full of men, I conducted some of my own 'scientific research'. A series of six photographs comparing two women at a time were shown to the dudes around the office. They were asked to choose whether the left or right woman in the image was more attractive to them.

I did my best to chose woman who didn't differ all too much from one another, with the exception of the first two photographs. Out of curiosity, ( and for science! ) I asked them to choose between a blonde and brunette. Apparently, a staggering 75% of Ultimate Guitar guys prefer brunettes to blondes.

After that experiment within an experiment, the next four series of photos, comparing two at a time, were shown. The first two photographs were comparing two blondes, while the other two were brunette. They looked relatively similar with the main difference being that one woman held a guitar while the other didn't.

Some initial reactions during the experiment before I dive into the results: 

          “I see boobs, so I'll go with the chick on the right.”

          “Eh she's wearing less clothes, so let's go with the one on the left.”

          “Can I choose both?”

As it turns out, the guys didn't necessarily correlate guitar playing to attractiveness in women. 68 percent of the men chose the woman without the guitar in the first image and 64 percent in the second image. However, one guy did note that the images with the guitars did automatically attract him to her. Since our very scientific data proves that Ultimate Guitar guys like brunettes, most of them had a difficult time choosing between the images with the blondes but some said their decision was settled on the fact that one was indeed holding a guitar.

So what do we make of this? Ladies who play guitar, you keep rockin' on and being the badass future Joan Jett that you are. Ladies who don't play? Try it out. Who knows, maybe it will spice up your dating profile. Whatever the reason, we've got to admit that anyone wearing a grungy leather jacket with a worn out band tee and guitar in hand is enough to make you look twice and maybe consider adding an Arctic Monkeys member to your bang list too.

A Happy International Ladies Day from all of us here at Ultimate Guitar and as always,

Play It Fucking Loud